Remembering Carol's Place

They don’t make ’em like they used to — not now nor back then. I’m talking about bars with live bands, and none on the South Shore was better than Carol’s Place in Island Park during the 1980s and ’90s.
I was reminded of Carol’s Place, once located about a mile from the Long Beach bridge at the northeast corner of Austin and Trafalgar boulevards, after I went to see Primo perform at Neptune beach last week.
My earliest memory of the bar stretches back to the late ’80s, when my then best friend, Victor, and I first dropped in and discovered it regularly showcased an eclectic array of bands, including Edward “Little Buster” Forehand, a blind, bluesy rock guitarist who once opened shows for B.B. King; the Volunteers, a Grateful Dead cover band; the Poets, whose sets were punctuated with Pink Floyd tunes; and Rosary Violet, the hardest and hottest metal-punk band east of Manhattan.
Victor and I shared diverse musical tastes, but we particularly wore out our albums of progressive rock bands such as Yes, King Crimson and Genesis. So naturally we were drawn to a Carol’s Place staple: Primo, a Long Beach-based band of exceptional musicians (some performed with Billy Joel and Steely Dan) who wrote their own jazz-rock fusion instrumentals that were a mix of the Dixie Dregs and Weather Report.
Sure, there were similar venues around the South Shore, like the Right Track Inn in Freeport. But what distinguished Carol’s Place was its intimate setting — a single basement-sized room with round tables for two, rickety wooden chairs, a low ceiling and a bar lined with stools right next to the short, compact stage — which had the feel of a Greenwich Village jazz club.
After my friends and I became regulars, Victor formed his own band, Zulu Groove, a trio that played its first and many other gigs at the Island Park bar. Their sound centered on funky rhythms that Victor rapped over — on songs with titles like “Can You Turn The Rest of Me On” and “Child’s Play” — evoking the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ early LPs.